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Welcome to GISWeekly! GISWeekly asked several industry spokespeople to comment on what were the most significant announcements for the year 2005, and what do they anticipate the emerging technologies of 2006 to be in their areas of expertise. This week we have replies from ESRI's president, Jack Dangermond, Autodesk's vice president of Infrastructure Solutions Division (ISD), Chris Bradshaw and GeoEye's president and CEO Matthew O'Connell.

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GISWeekly asked several industry spokespeople to comment on what were the most significant announcements for the year 2005, and what do they anticipate the emerging technologies of 2006 to be in their areas of expertise. This week we have replies from ESRI's president, Jack Dangermond, Autodesk's vice president of Infrastructure Solutions Davison (ISD), Chris Bradshaw and GeoEye's president and CEO Matthew O'Connell.

From ESRI, the future holds the GeoWeb, ArcGIS 9.2 and the Image Server. Autodesk launched the MapServer Foundation in November, the company's entry into the open source community. And GeoEye, formerly ORBIMAGE, completed its acquisition of Space Imaging this week and is looking forward to higher resolution imagery to pave the way to new products and services.

Jack Dangermond, President of ESRI

1) What were the most significant announcements in GIS and/or your area of expertise for the year 2005?

For ESRI users, it was ArcGIS Server. This is a complete GIS implemented in a server environment. It supports many levels of GIS implementation including departmental servers, enterprise systems, and even multi-organizational systems.

2. What do you see as the emerging technologies for 2006?

We are seeing the beginnings of the GeoWeb-a distributed network of GIS services that describe many aspects of geography and workflows. We envision that server-based GIS will be a key building block to support this vision. While the focus of GIS servers is on generating and serving the information products that are necessary for various missions, a new vision of creating a “system of systems” that can be used for a range of purposes- supporting regional, national, and even global application-also benefits from this architecture. The GIS server framework already supports map and data publishing, metadata cataloging, and the discovery of geospatial services. Over time, it will

expand to support the dynamic collection of a whole host of distributed GIS services, including data management, modeling, GIS analysis, Extract, Transform, Load (ETL), and advanced visualization. It will also provide a platform for GIS users to look at bigger problems that depend on cross-organization and cross-discipline collaboration. In 2006 we will release a free viewing technology called ArcGIS Explorer; a whole new way for GIS services to be processed and visualized.

3) Which of these do you feel will be realized and to what degree in 2006?

It's difficult to predict how fast the GeoWeb will be realized, but ESRI's ArcGIS 9.2 software-a major introduction of new functionality and server-based architecture-will contribute to its development. Included will be better cartography, data management, modeling, temporal GIS, and new tools for accessing GIS functionality across the Web.

4) What are the cutting edge developments to look for from your organization?

In addition to ArcGIS 9.2, ESRI will introduce the Image Server, which provides on-the-fly image processing by simultaneously processing and distributing images in a Web services environment. Also, ArcGIS Explorer is a new free Web client that promises to support a new way for GIS users to share and access GIS services of all types. GIS services-oriented technologies will contribute to the advancement of the GIS market; both improving and extending GIS at the enterprise and societal levels, and also GIS as a platform for spatially enabling other IT systems.

Chris Bradshaw, Vice President of the Infrastructure Solutions Division (ISD)

Autodesk, Inc.

1) What were the most significant announcements in GIS and/or your area of expertise for the year 2005?

In late November, Autodesk was involved in one of the biggest stories to hit the geospatial industry in years. Together with a fantastic community of smart and devoted community stakeholders including the MapServer Technical Steering Committee, the University of Minnesota MapServer Project and the DM Solutions Group, we launched the

Mapserver Foundation in late November. As a sign of our commitment to the foundation and its mission of promoting web mapping technology, we also announced the company is contributing the code for our next generation web mapping software to the foundation. Since the announcement, we have seen an explosion of press coverage and discussion group activity. As we expected, the response to Autodesk's entry into the open source community has been impassioned and generally positive.

Of course, part of the reason the announcement garnered so much attention was the fact that for the past 24 years Autodesk has been a traditional software vendor. While the company has supported open standards since its inception, we are now taking the step of investing in open source solutions. There were a number of factors that went into this decision. Primarily, the decision was a reflection of our customers' desire for faster innovation, more frequent product releases, and lower total cost of ownership. The open source approach to software development offers a number of advantages for software users and commercial vendors alike. Just as there was an explosion of discussion group

activity related to this announcement, we expect to see a large amount of development activity now that a snapshot of the source code is available for download at

As 2006 begins, we are excited about playing a part in changing the way web mapping software is developed and delivered. Although our MapGuide customers have enjoyed the ability to work with multiple data formats and open systems for years, we recognize there is also a large community of web mapping developers locked into a proprietary system which limits their choices. By offering an open system and making it so accessible to everyone, Autodesk is betting we will grow our business through offering formal support, subscription, and services rather than traditional software. It is a new way of business which requires new thinking and a willingness to try new things. Given how new this

all is, there are bound to be a few challenges along the way. However, we remain confident that the end result will be happier customers, better software, and stronger business.

Matthew O'Connell, president and CEO of GeoEye (formerly ORBIMAGE)

1) What were the most significant announcements in GIS and/or your area of expertise for the year 2005?

In 2005 the U.S. Government played a significant role in extending and broadening access to the products and services currently served by commercial imagery providers. The DOD's National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency's (NGA) increased reliance on commercial imagery is seen in their continuing need for imagery purchased through the multi-year ClearView contract. There were ClearView awards in 2005. The latest award was on January 6, 2006. The DOD awarded $60 million to the remote sensing companies for another year of imagery purchases. GeoEye received $36 million. Commercial satellite imagery was also used by the U.S. Government during the tragic hurricanes that hit the southern and Gulf

coasts last fall. GeoEye's IKONOS satellite collected some 35,000 square kilometers of imagery that was sent to first responders and Federal relief organizations to support rescue and reconstruction efforts.